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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26268703">dream synopsis</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/benditlikepress/pseuds/benditlikepress'>benditlikepress</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCIS</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, a series of tiny dreams basically, different style but i wanted to try something etc, featuring: my 'Tony and Ziva had sporadic sex over the years' headcanon, mildly nsfw</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:15:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,485</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26268703</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/benditlikepress/pseuds/benditlikepress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years of a relationship, told through dreams.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>dream synopsis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>
    <em>visions of the past and possible future</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>shoot through my mind and I can't let go</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>inseparable opposing images</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>when can you come back again?</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>-the last shadow puppets; dream </em>
  </strong>
  <b>
    <em>synopsis</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The first time Ziva had a dream about Tony, she'd woken with a start.</p><p>She didn't often dream - or at least, she rarely remembered them, and when she did they weren't exactly ones she wanted to hold onto. This one, though, was different. Visceral.</p><p>She might have thought that theoretically, if she could re-imagine Tony DiNozzo, she'd make him a little less annoying. A little quieter. More thoughtful. Instead, the one in her dream had been even more brash and cocky. He hadn't shut up until she'd thrown him down on the bed and covered his mouth with her own, his words turning into moans.</p><p>It was 4 in the morning when she’d woken up, still pitch-black outside but not quite enough time to get back to sleep.</p><p>She snaked her fingers inside her underwear with a sigh.</p>
<hr/><p>The second time Ziva had a dream about Tony, she had hands-on experience. Perhaps that was why the thing she remembered the most after waking up was the feeling of her hand on his neck. She hadn't even squeezed, just rested it there, and still his breath had hitched in a way that had sent her waking mind swimming with thoughts of that weekend in the hotel, naked bodies curling together.</p><p>She'd wondered, amused, where sex in your imagination fell along the line of breaching Gibbs' Rule 12. A rule that seemed to grow in importance every day – the one that Tony had been at such pains to tell her about when she'd asked him and McGee for a run-down on the way to a crime scene.</p><p>She'd never put much stock into sex dreams about people you spent a lot of time around, and she still hadn’t after her 2nd in as many months. It was inevitable in fact, she thought, given the contents of their time together. Barely masked sexual innuendo across the office paired with a weekend of simulated sex that once or twice threatened to spill into something not so simulated.</p><p>Besides, it wasn't like she'd been the only one guilty of it. Tony had been far from subtle on those handful of mornings he'd walked into the office and given her a double take. Or their second night in the hotel, where he'd mumbled something suspiciously like her name as he'd subconsciously wrapped his leg over hers.</p><p>A smile formed on her lips that she found hard to bite back.</p>
<hr/><p>The eighth time Ziva had a dream about Tony, she scolded herself and turned over.</p><p>It hadn't been anything particularly scandalous - a late night at the office, sparse details of a case Ziva thought might have been inspired by one that closed a couple of months ago. The rest of the team had, though, been conspicuous in their absence.</p><p>She’d known, by now, the dreams weren’t a good sign. A complication on top of everything else in her life – a feeling in the pit of her stomach when she woke up.</p><p>She had been well-aware he was keeping things from her, of course. The revelation that it had been a girlfriend – a serious one – had made it a little more difficult to stomach. She hadn’t expected the pangs of jealousy though maybe she should’ve done, events from the summer apparently a lot fresher in her mind than they were his.</p><p>Maybe Gibbs was right, about his rules. Then, even in his absence, she wasn’t sure what had happened with her and Tony could’ve been called dating. No rules broken. This was all her own doing.</p><p>Unable to get back to sleep, she'd checked her phone. He still hadn't replied to the message she'd sent after he ducked out of the office in a rush 5 minutes early. She turned her phone face down and pulled her pillow over her head.</p>
<hr/><p>The nineteenth time Ziva had a dream about Tony, she'd barely thought about anything else for days.</p><p>The plane had been over the Atlantic as she drifted off and was just about above land when she'd awoken, the reality of what lay ahead sinking in even as her mind was distracted by other, more personal things.</p><p>She’d tried not to feel as though she was returning to Israel with her tail between her legs, but it was difficult not to given the circumstances. She could only imagine the look on her father’s face when he spoke to Vance.</p><p>Tony’s own attitude towards what had happened also hadn’t helped resolve her mind to anything different. She hadn't been able to get the image of him at the funeral out of her mind. She'd spent half of the ceremony watching him from the corner of her eye, still as a statue next to her. Eyes fixed straight ahead. At one point she'd thought about touching him but her hand had frozen in mid-air and she'd put it back in her lap.</p><p>He'd been like that since it happened – brooding, drinking, always feeling as though he was one step away from an explosion that never came. She’d not tell him as such, but she did understand why he blamed himself. And, being Tony, it wasn’t something he’d be likely to get over any time soon.</p><p>The night before she'd left the States they'd ended up in bed together, an inevitability truncated by circumstance. When she’d woken up he’d been wide awake already, staring at her, though she hadn’t thought it was her that was on his mind. At least, not only.</p><p>He'd been falling, in her dream. She'd never much bought into finding hidden meanings in thoughts beyond your control but still it stuck in her head. Burrowing. She’d texted him as soon as she landed, telling him to call if he ever needed to talk, but he hadn't replied until a curt but friendly "thanks I'm good. Take care" the next day. She knew, on the ship, it would've been past 1am when he sent the message. For a split second she'd entertained the thought of sending another message - or calling, seeing for herself how much he'd had to drink. She couldn't imagine it would've been well-received, so she hadn't.</p><p>She'd had that dream several more times that summer.</p>
<hr/><p>The first time Ziva had a dream about Tony in his presence, she thought she handled it well.</p><p>It had been a long time since he’d been a focus of her subconscious – since before Somalia, and long before even that given the state of things. She didn't count the half-hallucinatory daydreams she'd had during the summer (she never got enough sleep to dream).</p><p>But now, in a Paris hotel room with the background noise of his breathing, maybe it had been poetic that her brain had decided to revisit that old habit.</p><p>He'd come to rescue her. As he'd done in real life, of course, but this version had been much more dramatic and blockbuster. Ziva's heart racing rather than the dull disorientated thud it had manged in real life. She’d woken up with it still racing in her chest for real and had gripped onto the sheets for a moment to regather her thoughts. Frustration almost immediately building as the fear subsided.</p><p>They'd had fun that day. The kind of genuine, thoughtless companionship Ziva knew they'd both been trying to hard to recapture the last couple of months. Pushing themselves out of ease by trying to be at ease, smiling wider to avoid the small herd of elephants in the room.</p><p>She'd tried not to consider the dream a set-back, though it was hard not to. Finally feeling as though she could turn a corner with him and suddenly being smacked in the face with the reminder of their reality.</p><p>She’d never told him about the dream. Instead, she'd rolled over to face him. He'd been frowning in his sleep and she stroked the lines of his face lightly, wondering how many of them were caused by her.</p><p>When she'd woke up, he'd been pressed against her. Hand on her stomach. Chin resting on her shoulder.</p>
<hr/><p>The first time Ziva thought a dream about Tony was a lesson, she implored herself to listen.</p><p>This particular one had just been a flash, a half-thought: she'd come home to him at the end of the day and they'd had dinner and she'd kissed him as though it was nothing. It wasn't that itself that had felt strange, though - it was that she'd woken up and realised it barely felt like a dream at all.</p><p>She'd had to have been in denial to try to claim things hadn't changed between them. Her reaction to the dream only proved that: calm, even a belief it might be a reality sometime soon, rather than blind fear or denial or laughing it off. Having seen Tony open up to her about his mother, and having done the same in return. Knowing now the shared experiences they had, along with those secrets that they didn’t talk about with anyone else.</p><p>Things, even then, had seemed to be progressing to the point of no return.</p><p>She knew that if she wasn't careful, she could send them flying off again. They never seemed to be more than 5 minutes from disaster and this prolonged period of calm she knew should be a sign to do something about it.</p><p>Fears were hard to allay, though even they were starting to reduce from a simmer. She’d known they couldn’t postpone it forever.</p>
<hr/><p>The first time Ziva had a dream about Tony and Tali together, she hadn’t actually known she was pregnant. Or, at least, she hadn’t been certain. She’d tried to dismiss it at first. Put her missed period down to stress, accepted the tiredness. But then the dreams had started.</p><p>She'd called him, a baby in her arms, and he'd not listened to a word she tried to say. Too focused on anger - anger that she left, dismissed him, that she'd call out of the blue and expect him to come running. A way he’d never been towards her in real life: resentful, and harsh, and bitter. The kind of attitude she deserved from him, she’d thought, after what had happened over the years.</p><p>The memory clung in her mind for days afterwards as she put off going to get a test – denial mixing with fear and a hundred other emotions she usually she kept buried.</p><p>She’d had the dream again a week later. Woke up with a start and brought a test at 5am. She’d stared at the positive result until well into the afternoon.</p>
<hr/><p>The first and only time Ziva sincerely wished a dream of Tony away – really, truly, felt fear at its presence, she decided he would understand.</p><p>Nightmares weren’t exactly an unusual occurrence given the situation – running and hiding for your life tended to bring up some repressed emotions, but ones about him had always carried more significance.</p><p>She'd thought about a time he'd heard her having a nightmare - tossing and turning in his bed after her father died. How he'd tried to comfort her even as she pushed him away, practically a life habit.</p><p>She was alone, though, this time. Cowered in the corner of a bed in a town in Eastern Europe she couldn’t remember the name of, haunted by thoughts of the two people who she wanted to see more than anyone in the world.</p><p>Tali’s face was so clear in her mind – every curl of her hair inked into her brain. Imaginary Tony was a different story. He didn't quite have a fully visible face, shadowed, but she knew it was him - the way he held himself, the sheer weight of his presence.</p><p>She'd called him in a fit of reckless excitement and arranged to meet them both in London. They'd been happy - delirious flashes of such, until the sky had got dark and suddenly it all came crashing down. The two of them snatched right in front of her eyes, leaving her sunk down on the wet street screaming after them.</p><p>She’d woken gasping for air, a blind panic that had devolved into a full-blown attack within seconds.</p><p>She hadn't slept at all the next night.</p>
<hr/><p>The next series of dreams Ziva had about Tony, he hadn’t had a face at all.</p><p>When awake she’d been able to remember every detail - every feature and colour, speculating on where hairs might be changing colour and new lines were forming.</p><p>In her dreams, nothing. They were the same every time. Always the same. She’d see the two of them, or arrange to meet, and things would be fine until they weren’t. Screaming. Blood. Panic attack. Rinse. Repeat.</p><p>Sometimes dreams weren't dreams, but were flashbacks instead. This had always been true in Ziva's case, but the ones involving Tony were proving particularly hard to shake. A shadowy figure, gun in hand, on the floor of her old apartment. A presence watching her as she sat with her father’s dead body.</p><p>She’d wished she could understand why he was like this. What possessed him to care so much: to put his entire life on hold to make her happy.</p><p>Sleep was near-enough impossible whenever that thought had popped into her mind.</p>
<hr/><p>The fifteenth year Ziva had a dream about Tony, she remembered every detail.</p><p>It had been nonsensical as far as dreams go – something to do with a tiger that had got loose from a zoo, and finding themselves running down sunny cobbled streets away from it. There hadn’t been fear, though – in fact, when Ziva had woken up, she could still hear Tony’s out-of-breath laughter echoing in her ears.</p><p>"What's up?"</p><p>Ziva had turned at the hand on her hip, opening her eyes to find him looking at her with a sleepy frown of concern. She had no idea how he’d sensed her wake up, but the thought made her smile.</p><p>"Just a dream. I remember them so rarely, it is strange when I do."</p><p>"Ah. Was I in it?"</p><p>"Almost always."</p><p>"Hmm, I like the sound of that."</p><p>"You do not even know what I was dreaming about."</p><p>"It was good, though."</p><p>"Was it?"</p><p>"Uh-huh. You're smiling."</p><p>He buried his face into her neck in a way that made her skin goosebump, kissing just below her earlobe.</p><p>"I am not sure what you mean." It had been the kind of childish flirtation that deemed to come easily at this time of night, running hands over Tony's arm where it was wrapped around her. He'd chuckled against her neck.</p><p>"You're allowed to dream about me, y'know. I am your husband, after all."</p><p>"I will be sure to let my unconscious mind know it has your permission."</p><p>"Never waited for it before, huh?"</p><p>"Just go back to sleep."</p>
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